3 Reconciliation
by TamerTerra
Summary: Sequel to Heylin Future and 'Helpless'. Raimundo wants to rejoin the Temple, and with Katnappé's help, he might redeem himself. But where do his loyalties really lie? And what's Wuya been doing for all this time? Extreme friendship fluff, not pairings.
1. Chapter 1

Glad you guys liked the last arc (Helpless)! Just as a recap to those that chose not to read it:

Jack kidnaps Rai while under the control of a strange Shen Gong Wu, the Trember Trident. Katnappé knocks Jack over the head with the Fist of Tebigong (for some reason) and 'steals' all of the Shen Gong Wu - even the double-up ones from the future! After rescuing Raimundo, she decides that it would be too dangerous to stay with him (what with all the people wanting him dead), and leaves him in a cave with the Sword of the Storm, taking the rest of the Shen Gong Wu with her.

Oh, and I note that an Alert didn't go out for the last chapter of Helpless (7), just in case you missed it.

**On with the fic!**

&o&o&

"A meeting," said Jack, thumping his fist on the table at which Raimundo and Katnappé sat. They looked doubtful, not fully convinced.

AfterRaimundo had awoken, alone in the cave, he had called together the so-called bad guys, not daring to meet with his former friends - not yet at least. From his manner, Raimundo assumed that Jack had no memory of the past few weeks - a blessing. However, Jack was now trying to rope him and his new partner-in-crime into a crazy plan to take down Wuya, and he regretted coming to find him.

"C'mon, we all want Wuya out of the way, right?" He shot a meaningful glance at Raimundo. "She _did_ try to bump you off, after all."

Raimundo grit his teeth. So now it was all about him. "And you just want to take over the world like it used to be. How exactly is this a united cause?"

"Well... Um..." Jack had hoped that they would just agree. Maybe he should have just hired a mercenary like Tubbimura? Even Katnappé seemed to be taking her cues from the Xiaolin-Heylin Dragon now.

"Didn't think so." Raimundo got up to leave, Katnappé reluctantly slid her chair backwards as well.

"Wait!" cried Jack, the cogs in his head spinning. "You could take the credit!" He paused, then added, slyly. "Your friends wouldn't turn you away if you defeated Wuya, would they? They'd welcome you back with open arms." Raimundo froze in his tracks, his eyes narrowing as Jack continued to talk.

"You _could_ say that it was your idea, that it was the plan the whole time...

Raimundo was swayed. "Fine, call them up." he said, turning back to the table, not sitting down. "But I have a condition."

"What is it?" asked Jack, cautiously.

"Invisibility," Raimundo said.

&o&o&

Jack and Ashley waited in a room of the ruined Temple. There was noises outside - rain noises and rat noises. Soon, the sounds that they had been listening for were heard - human noises. Ashley shivered.

"I don't know, should we really be trusting Jack Spicer?" Kimiko asked her companions.

"No. After what Raimundo has done, we shall not trust anyone else. But we will listen." said Omi, gravely.

"Alls ah know is that this here Ten Thousand Years of Darkness is close to turning permanent, and we still have no idea of how to stop it."

"After what she did to Rai..." Kimiko bit her lip. "I'm surprised that we've lived the past few months."

"She probably no longer considers us a threat" remarked Omi. "It is indeed a daunting predicament."

The arrived at the half open door.

"is this the place?" asked Clay.

"This is where he said to meet, yeah." Kimiko bit her lip again.

"Can we be sure that this is not a trap?" asked Omi, rhetorically.

"Do we have a choice?" countered Clay.

Two pairs of unseen eyes watched them as they entered.

&o&o&


	2. Chapter 2

Something occurred to Kimiko as she entered the room. Jack had called them there. Jack had said something at the last Shen Gong Wu meeting.

_Jack hit the red stick against his palm. "What do you mean it needs batteries?"he yelled, waving it about his head. "I've been using it on Raimundo all week and it hasn't lost any juice!"_

That had been months after Raimundo's death though, so unless Jack was a Necromancer - unlikely at best - Raimundo was...

But by the time that she had figured it out, a dark shape had hit her from behind. Something invisible knocked it back, holding it off, until the Shroud of Shadows slipped off and Raimundo, with the Sword of the Storm in his hands, became visible. Kimiko sat up, gasping, then saw what it was that had attacked her. In a blood rage Wuya was hardly recognisable - and it seemed that Jack wasn't to be trusted after all, as he was sitting apart from the fray with a smug look on his face. Katnappé looked genuinely surprised at this turn of events, and was dithering between shoving Wuya away and throttling Jack.

Jack grinned. A foolproof plan (if Wuya had been listening to his thoughts she would have said that it must have beenfoolproof indeed for _him_ to pull it off) - all of his enemies were in one room, and they looked like they would destroy each other. It was great! The only problem was that he was also in the room - it was time for a strategic retract. He clicked the Changing Chopsticks and ran toward a mouse hole, giggling like a mouse on helium. Scowling, Katnappé tried to stamp on him, but missed.

The 'fight' between Raimundo and Wuya had reached a stalemate. It seemed that in her rage at seeing Raimundo alive, Wuya was forgetting her powers, and Raimundo couldn't reach another Shen Gong Wu to tip the balance. Kimiko felt that the wind had been knocked out of her. Not only was Raimundo alive - but he was single-handedly fighting the Heylin Witch Wuya!

"Orb of Tornami!" Omi had evidently decided that it should not be single handed. But then she saw where the blast was aimed - directly at Raimundo! Kimiko had never seen such fury in the young monk's face. Had he really been glad when Raimundo had been thought dead? Now that she thought, he hadn't looked at the others' faces after the incident, assuming them to be as grief stricken as she.

Wuya had seized the opportunity when Raimundo had landed soaking wet on the ground by attacking with sharp claws, leaning right over him. He held her wrists, craning away from the nails aimed at his Jugular vein. He got his feet against her stomach and threw her off, before looking at the Xiaolin Apprentices for a moment, moving his mouth as though he would say something, but then giving up and turning to Katnappé.

"Are you okay?" he asked, trying to ignore the gazes burning into the back of his neck. Katnappé nodded affirmation, but looked sideways at the monks to gauge their reaction. He noticed, and turned back cautiously to address them.

"I didn't think that I was ever going to see you guys again. I'm... Sorry."

Omi's forehead broke out of it's frown in surprise. Repentance had not been what he has expected, not at all.


	3. Chapter 3

"Does... Anyone think that we should get out of here _before_ she gets up?" Ashley wrung her hands, slightly panicky.

"Yeah." Raimundo grabbed her right hand with his left. "Serpents Tail!"

"Wait!" cried Kimiko, getting up hastily and moving to grab him. She was too late - they had already vanished through the wall.

Wuya stood up, grinning.

"Run Away!" cried Omi, tripping over his feet in his rush to get away from Wuya. The other two looked at each other, then followed at a run.

Her side seemed to have been picked for her, thought Ashley as she watched Raimundo banking up the fire. Wuya had seen him take her hand and share the Shen Gong Wu - she was stuck. And Raimundo didn't seem to realise how much trouble that he'd got her into, to top it all off. She sighed.

"So," he said when he was finished with the fire and had sat down beside her. "Why did you go away after you saved my life?" He watched at her with those entrancing green eyes - she looked down into her lap.

"I don't know" she said cautiously. Come to think of it, why hadn't she just ignored him and dropped his hand? "You can't deny," she started angrily, "that being on your side is being on the side that Wuya wants to destroy!"

Raimundo looked at his knees, contemplating this new piece of information. "Is that why Omi attacked me, back there?" he asked her.

She snorted. "Don't ask _me_ what's going through their heads! It's easier to guess Jack's next move when he's using the Monkey Staff than what those Losers are thinking lately!" Raimundo watched her rant, frowning.

"What makes you say that?"

"They've been saying that they're against Wuya right from the very beginning, right?" He nodded consent. "So now they've gone to meet with Jack because of this plan - _and_ Jack dragged us into it, _and_ you believed him!" she interjected angrily, before continuing. "And then when he betrays everyone, they don't attack him, or even Wuya, they attack _you_, and you were fighting against her!" She folded her arms huffily and leant back against the cavern wall. "So, yeah, I'm cat-a-confused."

Raimundo imitated her pose. "I guess... But maybe, I dunno. Maybe they hate me more at the moment? I did betray them, after all. What's Wuya done since I've been gone?"

"You've been gone?"

"For about Two Months, apparently."

"Well, she hasn't done very much, actually. Not even raised a palace. She just... vanished. No one's seen her since she got her body back."

"Until now"

"Until now, yeah." There was silence but for the crackling of flames.

"In that case, I've done more to hurt them than she has" he looked downcast, and spontaneously drew his knees up to his chin. Ashley rolled her eyes. In a moment she was going to get all sappy again...

She wrapped her arm around his shoulders. "You could say that," she ventured. "But you've done more to help them too, right?"

"Yeah... But they think that I betrayed them!"

She sighed. "Well, it's too late to worry about that now. Just try to get some sleep tonight, and you can go beg for forgiveness or whatever tomorrow."

"You mean it?"

"Yes, I really mean it, Raimundo." She lay down on her side and tucked her backpack under her head. "Night."

"Oh yeah!" Raimundo cried, waking up out of his depressive state. "After I woke up this morning, I went back up to that mountain and found... This!" He held up a fairly bedraggled bag for her to see.

"So?"

"It's the one that I had when I left the Temple" he said, rummaging through it's contents, and eventually turning it upside-down to find what he was looking for. Finding it, he held it up. "Which means that we have a blanket!"

"Purr-fect." She said sarcastically, putting her head back down on the makeshift pillow. Who cared if he had a stupid blanket?

Later on though, when the fire had gone down, she decided that she _did_ care, and crawled over, teeth chattering, to slide underneath it, and to warm her body against his. No sense in freezing to death before Wuya had time to kill her, she reflected.

&o&o&

Thanks for the reviews, Kaisa, Jade and deranged black kitten of doom (I haven't seen you around in ages!). Here's the update that you all wanted!


	4. Going Home

Hao folks - just ANing to say that dbkod, you would be right _if they had seen the box_. But they didn't.

&o&o&

"I say we split up to search," said Raimundo as he and Katnappé dropped from the Longi Kite and into the forest clearing.

"Why?" she asked. He looked sheepish. "I thought you said that you could sense where it was!"

"Well, I can. It's just... everywhere here. It must be because it just activated," he said.

Ashley sighed. "So what does this... Silver Manta Ray look like?"

"Well, it's a Manta Ray, and it's Silver..."

"A _helpful_ description please!"

"You'll know it if you see it." He walked over to the edge of the clearing and disappearing through foliage.

"If you say so." She moved over to the opposite side and began to search, rolling her eyes at the answering "I do say so!"

Raimundo froze as he heard voices. The Xiaolin Dragons! He dove behind a tree, bitterly wishing that he'd remembered the Shroud of Shadows. Kimiko ran past him, sweeping the area with the Falcon's Eye. He stuck his head out to watch her progress after she had passed by him, until a foot struck him in the side and knocked him to the ground. As he got up slowly, another blow struck the underside of his chin, knocking him backward. He kept his feet, and was able to block the next few of Omi's moves.

"Hey, Hey!" he protested. "I'm not here to fight you guys!"

"You're not?" Clay queried, cracking his knuckles like he did when hoping for a fight.

"No way!" exclaimed Rai, brushing off his clothes and trying to look as harmless as possible. He spread out his hands. "I'm here for the Shen Gong Wu, same as you guys."

"How did you know about the active Shen Gong Wu?" Omi watched him sceptically.

"Um... Same way as last time? Tiger-"

"Wuya told you." The way Clay stated it made Raimundo look up suddenly and eyeball him, before looking back to his shoes.

"So, you guys heard about that... Er..."

"How can you still be working for Wuya after she tried to destroy you? Twice!" Omi was enraged.

"I'm not working for Wuya!" Raimundo shouted. "And," he added, "I never was." He turned away as a spiral of light came up from the clearing that he had left Katnappé.

"A Xiaolin Showdown!" cried Omi, and ran off toward it. Clay, with a little more distrust, used the Silk Spinner to stick Raimundo to a tree before chasing after.

"Hey, that's a new Shen Gong Wu!" Raimundo complained, struggling against the sticky web.

When the Dragons of Earth and Water arrived at the scene, they found Kimiko and Katnappé in a stalemate over the Silver Manta Ray, and were just in time to hear the words "Lets Go, Xiaolin Showdown!" before they dissolved in light. "Gong Yi Tempai!" they cried, and took off through the creepers at a run while the spectators were piloted far above by a ledge of moving rock. When they were half way through the course, Raimundo jumped onto an adjacent ledge.

"What's the Showdown?" he asked.

"Looks to me like a race." Clay answered. To their surprise, the other boy stood up and cupped his hands into a Megaphone.

"Go on, you can do it! Don't give up!" Both girls swivelled their heads to look at him.

"He's cheering for me, you know," Katnappé gloated.

"In your dreams, Kitty Litter!"

"Then this must be _your_ nightmare"

Something occurred to Kimiko. If she really thought that... "Well, he's my boyfriend." She whispered it just loud enough for the other girl to hear.

"That's not what he said to me last night." Ashley grinned smugly and showed her claws as Kimiko stopped in shock. A leap and a bound, and Katnappé had crossed the finish line first.

"You were cheering for me, right Raimundo?" Kimiko asked when the world had become normal again.

"Sure!" he said, a little too loudly, trying to ignore the look on Katnappé's face as she dropped the Shen Gong Wu that she had just won.

Kimiko grinned. "Good." She threw herself at him and wrapped her arms around his waist in a tight squeeze. Omi joined in the hug, as Ashley picked up her Wu and stole away, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.


	5. Betrayal

Raimundo opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The frown of betrayal that had stolen across Katnappé's features before she had run away flashed before his vision again. He groaned, and sat up.

Sneaking through the Temple wall, he put the Eye of Dashi into his pocket, reactivating the Serpents Tail to slash with the Golden Tiger Claws.

He crept into the cave. Firelight welcomed him, and he heard quiet regular breathing - Ashley's he presumed. Yes, she was lying near the wall, covered in his blanket, her head on her cat-pack. He hurried over to her.

"Ashley, Ashley. Wake up."

"Cut it out Jack, my evil name is... Huh?" Her eyes opened. "Raimundo?" She sat up and regarded him in his new T-Shirt. "What are you doing back here?"

"I'm sorry if it was sudden, my going back to the Temple I mean, but I..." Katnappé remembered what Kimiko had said to her.

"I understand completely."

"You do?"

"Yeah." She pasted an obviously false smile onto her face. "You just like her more." She rolled her eyes and dropped the smile, flopping back down to sleep again. "Don't let the cave hit you on the way out."

"How can a cave... But what? What are you talking about?" He sounded injured, and Katnappé opened one eye to peek at his face. He looked baffled.

"Don't play stupid. Kimiko told me all about you when we were showdowning."

"You have conversations during showdowns?"

"Don't dodge!"

Raimundo sighed, and lowered himself down to lie on his side, facing her. He was interested to find out what exactly Kimiko had been saying. "What am I dodging? What did she say?"

"Humph!" Ashley flipped over onto her other side to turn away from him, but then felt a hand on her uppermost shoulder. He was so close...

"What is it, Ashley? I don't know what's wrong!" He drew her towards him and leaned over her, looking desperate. "You were there for me when no-one else was in Jack's basement. You're important to me, and I don't like that there's something between us. Ashley..." he let go of her arm, allowing her to sit up, and turned away, defeated. Tired of torturing him, Katnappé propped herself up onto her elbows, and seeing how unhappy he was, wrapped her arms around him.

"Rai..."

He started - that was the first time that she had shortened his name.

"Did you mean what you said?"

"Which part?" he asked, trying to ignore that one of her hands had slipped down past his hip.

"That... I was important to you?"

He started again, turned, and wrapped her hands about her waist. "Of course!" he smiled. "I've lost count how many times you've saved my life in the past few days!"

"Well... You saved me too, you know." She blushed, trailing a hand down his leg. Just a bit more... She grinned.

"But you started it, with the water" he said.

"Oh, I got more out of that trade than you did," she grinned, clutching her prize and not thinking what she was saying. His face faulted, and his eyes widened.

"Did you just..." He started, confused. She backtracked through her brain, and took in exactly what she had said.

"No!" she squealed, shoving him away from her across the ground. "Now!" She clutched the Eye of Dashi in her hand as a stone cage rose from the earth and trapped the boy.

"Thank you, Katnappé!" cried the being that had emerged from the tunnel. "I've been looking forward to this..."

&o&o&

An: You guys know how to use the purple button there! Hope you're all enjoying this, even if you don't review.


	6. God Help The Outcasts

AN: I've been neglecting this story for months, I know. But now I'm back working on it, and I've got the basic plot line of the next arc sussed on a basic level (something that needed doing before I could put up the next instalment - though I will be redoing once this is no longer a WIP, I want to avoid continuity errors first time round). So... yeah.

Oh, I almost forgot: Con-crit. If you think something is messy or poorly executed, **tell me** so that I can take it into account when I go through again.

&o&o&

Raimundo was sprawled across the floor of his cage, feeling very disorientated. Where had the cage come from? A moment ago he had been speaking with Ashley, but when she had thrown him across the room...

"Thank you, Katnappé!"

Wuya's voice. What was she... _Katnappé? What was she being thanked for?_ He reached out to touch the earthy bars, staring around, looking for any indication of what had just happened. Ashley's eyes were staring too, but at a point some way above his head.

"My pleasure," she said. She looked like she was going to add something, but stayed silent.

"Good." Wuya walked around Raimundo's cage. "But why did you take so long to disarm him?"

_Disarm me?_ Raimundo remembered the Eye of Dashi in his pocket, and felt around for it. "Eye of-" he started to whisper, but couldn't find the thing. "Huh?" It was actually missing, and couldn't be found even after turning his pockets. He cast his eye over the ground, wondering where he could have dropped it, but finally focussed on the item in Ashley's hand. He mouthed her name soundlessly.

"I was toying with him," Ash- no, _Katnappé_ started, but Wuya cut her off with a harsh laugh.

"You should be more careful who you decide to trust, Raimundo."

"I was toying with him," Katnappé said, more loudly in order to be heard over Wuya. "Can't a girl have some fun?" The way she said it seemed scripted, as though she wanted to put something across that was false.

"Fun?" Raimundo repeated in a croak. He sank back to the floor; the cage was low and it had just hit him what a predicament he was in. The last time that he had seen Wuya she had tried to kill him, and if Katnappé was working with her... He hadn't told anyone at the temple where he was going, either - anything could happen, and no-one would ever know...

Just as Raimundo was beginning to feel the weight of worry, Katnappé spoke again. "No joke. Being on your side is like- It's like-" She paused. "You _do_ know that everyone hates you, right?" she finished desperately, raising her eyes as she did so to look him in the face for the first time. The eye connection almost made her choke.

He tried a laugh, very aware of Wuya smirking in the background. "Not everybody." Thinking about it, though... Jack had been very aggressive on their last encounters, Katnappé had betrayed him, he had betrayed Wuya... And that was without even thinking about the monks. Kimiko had seemed genuinely glad to see him, and so had Clay after things had been explained, but Omi, and Clay initially, had been another matter.

"Being friends with you would have got me killed!" Katnappé shouted, clearly not paying much attention to the company.

Raimundo was speechless for a moment. "So...this?" he asked eventually. She didn't have an answer.

"Enough conversation!" Wuya exclaimed with a clap of her hands after silence had reigned for a moment. "You can go now," she said, waving Katnappé away. "Your part here is done."

"Thank you," the girl said, and left the cave.

As Ashley walked, a few feet from the entrance, there was a flash of green light and she heard a boy's yell of pain and surprise. She spun around with a strangled shout and took a step back, but forced herself to stop. Steeling herself for the next, and wincing when it occurred., she walked on. _It's not me_, she told herself, _it's just self-preservation_.

The third cry, however, made her break into a run. A flash of real lightning in the darkened sky made her slow again, but she was a good few metres away before allowing herself to look back. "Don't tell me..." she moaned at herself, drawing her Golden Tiger Claws.

There was only one place that she could go to help him now.

To be continued...


	7. Or Nobody Will

In the Xiaolin Temple, the Xiaolin Apprentices were still sleeping peacefully. A slight disturbance in the air woke Kimiko, but she rolled over again before opening her eyes. She noticed the sounds of breathing as she sat up, but attributed it to the other three and crawled out of bed, feeling thirsty. _A drink of water might help with getting back to sleep_, she reasoned.

Walking past Clay's cubicle, she frowned, stopped and took a few steps backward. Where was Raimundo? She rubbed sleep from her eyes, stopping to think. He shouldn't be out wandering about - it was dark, and he _knew_ what they would think... She had better find him.

She checked the vault first, even though she hated herself for doing so. It was just more evidence that deep down, she really still didn't trust him. And there had been a lot of evidence lately. Listening, she thought that she heard footsteps behind her, and spun around to meet whomever it was. No-one.

She gave a fake yawn with one eye half open, scanning the walls and ceiling. Still nothing - or at least, nothing visible. She shrugged, and turned around, coming face-to-bust with the black-suited villainous blonde, Katnappé.

"What, I didn't beat you bad enough in the Showdown?" Kimiko snarled, getting into her 'ready' position.

"I need your help- Wait, what?"

"What did you say?" The girl-monk was incredulous.

"Raimundo is-" Katnappé started, but to her increasing annoyance was cut off _again_.

"He's with you?" Kimiko vociferated, furious, mentally erasing her discomfort at doubting him.

"No! With..." Katnappé faltered, remembering whose fault it was. "Wuya," she said.

Kimiko seethed. "I knew it, that trait-"

"I mean, as a prisoner," Katnappé continued. Seeing the other girl stop and blink, backtracking, she decided that she had time to make a dig. "I'll tell him that you said that, though."

"Who is a prisoner?" asked a very sleepy Omi who was standing beside Clay. Clay was the only one of the monks shod.

Ashley pushed past Kimiko, whom she disliked, and spread out her hands to the boys. "Raimundo's been taken prisoner by Wuya, and you have to help-"

"What! How could this happen?" Omi exclaimed, jumping up into the air in comic fashion. He had apparently dispensed with his own prejudice much quicker than she had, Kimiko noted sourly.

"How can we be sure that this isn't a trap?" she asked sceptically and then added (as it was better to get these things out in the open): "Rai could still be on Wuya's side for all we know!"

There was silence. "Can we risk it if you're wrong?" Clay asked, his tone suggesting the negative. Omi and Ashley hovered for the verdict, and Kimiko frowned.

"No," she admitted, "we can't." She sighed. "Fine. Off we go, to face who-knows-what, for a friend who might not even-"

"I beg to differ, Kimiko!" Omi stated. "We _do_ know what!" When she raised an eyebrow, he impatiently explained himself: "Wuya, who else!" Feeling that enough time had been spent on that, he turned back to Katnappé. "Where are we going?"

She grinned, glad to have got her own way, and slashed the air with her claws, opening a portal. "Through there," she said triumphantly, and waited expectantly for one of them to go through.

Kimiko's face had turned purple, but she didn't seem to know what to blow up about first - the fact that those Shen Gong Wu were blatantly from their vault, or that they were being expected to precede an enemy into unknown territory. Clay placed a hand on her shoulder. "Calm down," he whispered. Kimiko bit her lip and let herself deflate. She had learnt some things during her stay at the temple - she now knew not to go into a potentially dangerous situation boiling mad.

When she was sure that she was focussed again, she followed Clay through the portal.

&o&o&


	8. The End

The cage surrounding Raimundo had remoulded itself into a solid straitjacket that held him to the ground. Wuya seemed to have been the one to take the Trember Trident from Jack, as she twirled it in her fingers before him.

"What are you going to do?" he asked. She had thrown three bolts of green lightning in his general direction, and he had yelled pre-emptively at each. Now, however, she sat back as if waiting for something.

"What are you going to do?" he asked a little louder.

"Oh, do be quiet. Raimundo, as long as you tell your friends later that I've been using this on you," she said holding up the Shen Gong Wu, "then I won't need to actually bother."

"Deal!" he said, relieved. "But... seriously, why?"

"My dear, _dear_ Raimundo - this is all part of my plan!" she exclaimed, and began to pace. "You see, I want to make it up to you for treating you so badly at the beginning of our partnership."

If he had been able to move, Raimundo would have shifted uncomfortably. That 'bad treatment' had resulted in his being sent to the future, where he had defeated Wuya using powers that he had been unable to recreate since. It had also resulted in his current state - being trapped in the wooden puzzle box had turned him into a ghost and given him the ability to sense the whereabouts of newly activated Shen Gong Wu. Both were hidden, however, by his own lying tongue and a curious side affect that had come to the Serpents Tail of the future.

As Wuya's hand snaked under his chin to push his head up from the neck, he was thrown out of reminiscing. "And like it or not," she said, "your friends trusting you is important for that plan."

"That's good," he said with a smile. "I've only just been able to move back in!" _By betraying another friend,_ he remembered sombrely.

She wagged a finger at him as she stood up. "But that doesn't mean that I shall be telling you the plan!"

"Oh yeah, sure. Wouldn't expect you to..." _Nobody tells me anything anymore, anyway._

"And I'm just helping you because you helped me."

A smile began to mount on Raimundo's lips. "Right," he said.

Wuya's mouth curved upward at the corners. "I'm glad that we understand each other," she said.

Raimundo nodded, and then another thing occurred to him. "So was that thing in the ruin just a big act, then?"

"Of course!" She leant her head on its side, listening. "If I had been _trying_ to kill you, you wouldn't have survived." She then held the Trember Trident above his head, and whispered. "It seems that our chat time has come to an end - this may sting just a _little_ bit."

There was a crash at the cave entrance, and the trident began its descent. Raimundo cried out against the pain of the electrical burst that spread from his dorsal muscles, falling limp when it was gone.

"Hold it right there, Wuya!" Omi shouted, the other monks and Katnappé standing behind him.

Wuya gasped in mock surprise. "Katnappé! Have you betrayed me?"

"Yes!" she shot out, standing strongly (though next to Clay in case there was the need for a shield).

Kimiko looked over at the blonde. "Did you..." she started. There wasn't any need to finish the question - it was obvious to Kimiko from the way that the other girl avoided her gaze that yes, this was her fault.

"Guys! You came!" Raimundo had recovered from the fuzziness of the head induced by the Trember Trident. Katnappé looked at her shoes, trying to make herself seem as small as possible.

"You let Raimundo go!" yelled Clay, and the Dragon Apprentices assembled into some kind of formation. _Another new one,_ Raimundo thought drowsily. _Another new one without me._

Katnappé found herself being shuffled behind them, out of the way. She held the Eye of Dashi, the Shen Gong Wu that she had filched from Raimundo's pocket, to her chest and watched the battle. Wuya used mostly kicks and punches with the occasional flash of green light to fight, whereas the three Apprentices tried to team up and draw her away from the captive Wind Dragon, who had struggled up onto his knees.

Then she had an idea. "Tiger Claws," she called, sticking her free hand through the rift and rummaging impatiently, eventually pulling out the Fist of Tebigong. "Fist of Tebigong!" she cried, running over to Raimundo as she did so. The boy's eyes widened at the sight, but he realised what going on when the straitjacket cracked and disintegrated.

He wobbled up, holding her arm to steady himself. "Thanks, Ash," he said as he recovered, and then flexed his arm muscles to wake them up. She looked at him, confused as to whether he was being sarcastic or not, but he was already running to the other side of the cave where they used to keep their Shen Gong Wu. He picked the Sword of the Storm and cried its name, summoning a huge gust of wind to drive the already-moving Wuya out of the cave.

The warriors crowded around him with their generic cheers and cries of 'What happened?' as he humoured them. Ashley found her feet, watching them for a moment. Her eyes filled with tears and she bolted past them to the back wall, where she dodged behind a fold in the rock and disappeared.

Raimundo turned around. "Ashley!" he shouted, but didn't wait for an answer before stumbling over to where she had vanished. He examined the wall feverishly, but when he found the hidden entrance there was a hand on his arm, holding him back.

"Why are you going after her?" Kimiko demanded. "She betrayed you!"

"She's still my friend!" he cried, trying to shake her off. She held fast for a moment more, glaring at him, but her fingers loosened when she realised that those same words were missing from her own script. He was gone in an instant, and she slumped guiltily against the wall.

&o&o&

It was dark in the tunnel, but Ashley's footsteps were loud in front of him. He struck out in the darkness for any sort of marker - a wall, a line, _anything_. He was close to some sort of vertical surface, so he traced his fingers along it as he walked, not daring to go too fast and listening hard for the footsteps that led the way. It occurred to him that this was quite possibly the stupidest thing that he'd ever done - she didn't want him following her, the others wouldn't know which direction he'd gone in... Could have been suicide.

_Too late too think about that now_, he thought resolutely and quickened his pace. The tunnel was mostly linear, but there were occasions when the wall fell away and he was forced to stumble forward blindly until he regained it. The footsteps were becoming fainter, too. _She knows her way around here_, he thought, and then wondered why they hadn't explored the passages together.

Eventually he came to wooden panelling instead of rock, and chinks of light from the other side of it began to appear. He couldn't hear the footsteps at all, now, but they seemed to have arrived. He pressed his eye against one of the chinks to see an empty, though ornate, dining hall. In the middle of the room there was a large table with two glasses - one empty, one half-full - opposite one another.

Moving on past other rooms, he realised that this was some kind of house - most likely Ashley's own. _But why would she make us sleep in a stupid cave if her house was right here?_ he wondered, before realising that he was walking though a collection of girl's coats and skirts - and hit his head against an obstruction ahead. Swearing, he put out his hands to find a strange wall, panelled and engraved with... a door handle?

He shrugged, and pushed against it.

The door came ajar easily and he peeked through before entering. It was dark, but not the dark of the tunnel - soft light permeated the heavy curtains to his right. With a blush, Raimundo recognised that he had found Ashley's bedroom - a fact proved by the hunched over figure in front of him.

As he stood there, not sure whether he was in or out, she spoke. "Why did you come after me?" she asked quietly.

"Because we're friends?" He waited for a response, and then walked over nervously to sit by her side. "Friends don't let other friends go off by themselves. Not twice in the same day, at least."

She flopped backwards and looked up at him. "Well, you have your old friends back now," she said in a disinterested manner.

There was a pause. "Sorry about the mix up after the showdown," he said. "I meant to be cheering for you, but she asked and... Sorry." He bit his lip, examining her face. "And I meant what I said earlier," he said louder, "even if you didn't."

She didn't make any indication that she'd heard him, just stared at the ceiling. "Don't talk so loud," she said eventually, evenly. "My dad'll hear you and you'll have to get out."

"So you want me to stay?" he asked with a grin. She didn't answer, though he thought he saw... _Wait_, he thought as he peered closer at her face. _Is she... blushing?_

"Why is your face so close?" she asked, looking at him oddly. He realised that he had got very close indeed while looking at her cheeks, and hastily propped himself back onto his arms to move away. She had other ideas about that, however, and followed him with a catty smile and made their noses touch. It only took a moment for him to give into the temptation and kiss her.

Later, after an overprotective father had opened the door to check on his daughter, and Raimundo had fled through the window (not forgetting to snag the Eye of Dashi as he went), he found that his friends were still waiting for him in the cave, unsure of were they were and reluctant to search in the rain. He accepted his Golden Tiger Claws from Clay, and they returned to the Temple. No-one asked after Katnappé.

&o&o&

AN: Hope you liked... Of the 1744 words of this installment, 800-ish were typed tonight, so I feel proud. If you're after the next arc, and the KatRaiJack goodness that comes with it, keep an eye on my profile on... Let's say Sunday. Yes, I'll put up the 1st chapter of the next arc on Sunday if I can reach the computer.


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